Category Archives: Events

Ariana, age 11, created a beautiful night scene inspired by Kiyochika’s “Fireworks at Ike-no-Hata.”

Stephen Eckerd is head of ImaginAsia family programs at the Freer|Sackler.

As a child, I loved playing in the dark. I could find my way from my bedroom to the refrigerator without turning on a light or bumping into anything. Kobayashi Kiyochika’s woodblock prints, such as one of fireflies dancing over a river, recall childhood evenings in June along the banks of the Potomac.

The moment I saw Kiyochika’s prints, I knew I wanted to create an activity that explored Kiyochika’s nocturnes and allowed children to use oil pastels to paint with light on black paper. In the ImaginAsia classroom, families examined works from the exhibition Kiyochika: Master of the Night and produced nightscapes that incorporate Kiyochika’s silhouettes as overlays for their compositions.

In Kiyochika’s 1881 print “Fireworks at Ike-no-Hata,” spectators climb a willow tree to get a better view of fireworks. Robert O. Muller Collection.

Mercy, age 8, painted fireworks that explode in pinwheels of light.

Kiyochika: Master of the Night is on view in the Sackler through July 27. View a slideshow of Kiyochika’s work.

Thundering taiko drumming met traditional Japanese dance as artists from Tokyo’s Tamagawa University treated National Cherry Blossom Festival visitors to a special performance this afternoon. The group, which is led and choreographed by Kabuki dance master Isaburoh Hanayagi, is one of the top-ranking Taiko groups in Japan and comes out of the country’s most prestigious performing arts school.

London-based storyteller Xanthe Gresham returns to the Freer|Sackler for Nowruz on March 8.

Arash Moradi and I are delighted to be returning to the Freer|Sackler with tales from the Shahnama (the Persian Book of Kings) for family audiences. It’s always a joy to be part of the museums’ annual Nowruz celebration. Revisiting these stories is like the deepening of a longstanding friendship: Each time we discover something new.

An epic poem consisting of some 50,000 verses, the Shahnama took its author, Firdawsi, more than thirty years to complete. It is the longest poem to have been written by a single person.

According to legend, Firdawsi was supposed to be paid his weight in gold on the poem’s completion. While he was writing, however, a new shah was enthroned, and the poet was only offered his weight in silver. When the new shah finally read the magnificent poem, he was so overwhelmed by its skill and beauty that he rushed to bestow Firdawsi with the riches he was due. The shah was too late and only met the great poet’s hearse.

A heady mixture of tragedy and romance, the Shahnama piles up exquisite images and striking moments of truth and humanity. We can only scratch at the surface of this remarkable narrative, but what a rich surface it is!

On Saturday, March 8, Arash and I will perform three sets of tales:

12 pm: the story of Creation and the Demons, followed by the stories of Jamshed and Zahak

2 pm: the stories of Sam, Zal, and Rustam

4 pm: the tale of Sohrab, Rustam, Bizan, and Manijer

We hope to see you there!

See the day’s schedule of events. Follow the conversation at hashtag #nowruz.

In his 1965 book The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Donald Richie claimed that the director’s 1960 film The Bad Sleep Well was based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The similarities, after all, are clear. Both feature an ambivalent hero on a quest for revenge. Kurosawa himself named Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare his favorite authors, and Hamlet and Macbeth (which he adapted in 1959 as Throne of Blood) his favorite plays. In addition, Richie’s deep knowledge of Japanese culture and personal friendship with Kurosawa made his book the authoritative guide to the filmmaker’s work.

Thirty years later, Japanese Shakespeare scholar Kaori Ashizu questioned Richie’s theory. In her 1995 essay “Kurosawa’s Hamlet?” Ashizu suggests that Richie’s rarely questioned interpretation detracts from The Bad Sleep Well’s importance as a daring attack on the corrupt corporate culture of the time. While acknowledging similarities in plot, she points out that the true parallels don’t emerge until halfway through the film, so those going into it primed for a modern-day Japanese Hamlet adaptation will be disappointed. She further argues that previous scholars worked a bit too hard to find Hamlet-like qualities in the film’s hero, Nishi (played by the great Toshiro Mifune), and bent over backwards to find exact counterparts in the play for other characters in the film.

Still, she does see a distinct parallel between the venal business executives the film assails and Denmark’s rotten court. This intrigues me because it indicates just how deeply ingrained Hamlet is in both Western and Japanese culture. In another essay, Ashizu sketches a history of the play’s influence in Japan, from its first mention in 1841 through kabuki versions, modern stage adaptations, and various translations and interpretations of the play within a Japanese context.

For Harold Bloom, author of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Hamlet is that rare character who transcends his own play, possessing an intelligence, wit, and depth beyond not only his fellow characters, but us as readers and playgoers, and perhaps even Shakespeare himself. He’s not so much a fictional character as he is a mythological figure (Bloom compares Hamlet’s status to that of Helen of Troy, Odysseus, and Achilles), deeply entwined with our development as a culture.

Ashizu notes “the long-lasting idolatry” of Hamlet “among young men of letters” in Japan. The intellectual Kurosawa certainly absorbed some of him. How much Hamlet is there in The Bad Sleep Well, and how much Hamlet is there in its hero, Nishi? You can judge for yourself when the film screens this Sunday.

The Bad Sleep Well will be shown on Sunday, March 9, at 2 pm in the Meyer Auditorium.Throne of Blood will be shown on Friday, March 14, at 7 pm in the Meyer Auditorium.

Hardly. When artists evoked avian melodies, as Thomas Dewing did in The Four Sylvan Sounds, they intended to soothe and refresh, to take the viewer out of “the harness of business” and into a more pleasant, “sylvan” realm. The sounds and scents of nature are mentioned with surprising frequency in Freer’s correspondence with artists and friends. Dewing used the sensory pleasures of a woodland ramble to induce Freer to visit him at his summer studio in Cornish, New Hampshire. “I wish you could be here,” Dewing wrote in June 1894, “taking in this cool fresh air filled with bird notes & scents of flowers.”

Two years later, the artist translated this experience into the visual language of painting, telling Freer he had begun work on a pair of screens representing “the four forest notes—the Hermit Thrush, the sound of running water, the woodpecker, and the wind through the pine trees.” These screens, now on view in Sylvan Sounds: Freer, Dewing, and Japan, incorporate a number of influences, the most direct being the natural beauty of the New England countryside. The figures were inspired by ancient Greek Tanagra figurines, and the theme came from a poem called “Wood Notes” by the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dewing’s debt to Japanese art is evident in the bifold format of the screens and the simplicity of the unframed panels. The flowers and forest leaves, some painted with a stencil, resemble the elegant, stylized patterns of many screens in Freer’s Japanese collection, along with the multisensory imagery denoting bird songs and rustling grasses.

Freer had purchased his first two Japanese folding screens early in 1896, just after returning from his first visit to Japan. Later that same year, Dewing began to paint The Four Sylvan Sounds. During the two years that Dewing worked on these panels, Freer acquired sixteen Japanese screens, twelve of which are now in the museum’s collection. After promising his art collection to the Smithsonian Institution in 1906, Freer stipulated that his Japanese screens had to be displayed in a special gallery in a proposed new museum. He envisioned the space as a link between galleries devoted to Dewing and other American artists and those featuring the art of Whistler. This early arrangement underscored Freer’s belief in cross-cultural aesthetic connections between East and West—a principle theme in the current exhibition as well.

No filmmaker did more than Abbas Kiarostami to bring the world’s attention to Iranian cinema in the 1990s. With their spare, humanist, and philosophically rich stories imbued with poetic imagery, films like Through the Olive Trees, Taste of Cherry, and The Wind Will Carry Us won awards at major film festivals. They also played to critical raves in North America and Europe, influenced a generation of Iranian filmmakers, and established Kiarostami as a major figure in world cinema.

But in the early 2000s, Kiarostami grew restless and—at the height of his worldwide popularity—embarked on a daringly experimental phase. He challenged traditional notions of film narrative and even the role and function of the filmmaker. In his 2002 film Ten, the master auteur, whose directorial achievements had been recognized with awards from Cannes and Venice, attempted to absent himself from the artistic process: he had his actors perform for cameras mounted inside a car as they drove around Tehran.

Five: Dedicated to Ozu, showing this Sunday at 2:45 pm in the Freer’s Meyer Auditorium, is an even more radical departure. Presented in conjunction with the Sackler exhibition Sense of Place: Landscape Photographs from Asia, it is a film constructed of five landscapes, each of which tells its own subtle story. Its stars are dogs, ducks, pieces of driftwood, and the moon. Landscape has always been important to Kiarostami; two of his landscape photographs appear in Sense of Place. It plays a major role even in his narrative films, and in Roads of Kiarostami, which precedes Five at 2 pm, he discusses landscape’s place in his artistic process. But in Five it is the sole subject—which isn’t to say that the film is dry or difficult. Several years ago I heard Kiarostami speak about his work. During his opening remarks he chose to show a humorous clip from Five involving ducks running back and forth on a beach. It was a real crowd-pleaser: comedy constructed purely from movement, timing, and ingenious framing.

If Kiarostami had continued to work in this vein he might have been seen, like Marcel Duchamp or Philip Guston, as an artist who abandoned the gifts that made him famous to deliberately explore more difficult aesthetic terrain. But in recent years he has returned to narrative filmmaking with Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love. Though they were made in Italy and Japan, respectively, these films are as mysterious and beguiling as his earlier work in Iran. So maybe Kiarostami is more like Kim Ki-duk, a filmmaker whose foray into the unfamiliar enriched and refreshed his approach to what we knew and appreciated in the first place.

But this series has more than just movies to offer. On September 20, Chicago-based jazz musician Tatsu Aoki brings his MIYUMI Quartet to provide live musical accompaniment for the avant-garde silent film A Page of Madness (cowritten by famed novelist Yasunori Kawabata). Yale professor Aaron Gerow, author of A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920sJapan, also will be on hand to introduce the film and sign copies of his book.

So what’s your homework assignment? On September 29 and October 13 and 20, the film screenings will be followed by book club gatherings, giving you the chance to discuss the movies and the works that inspired them. The September 29 book club will look at the Ryunosuke Akutagawa tales that inspired both Rashomon and that day’s film, The Outrage (starring F|S September calendar coverboy William Shatner). On October 13 we’ll discuss Keigo Higashino’s eerie murder mystery The Devotion of Suspect X and its Korean film version, Perfect Number, and on October 20 we explore the world of manga and anime after the screening of 5 Centimeters per Second, which Makoto Shinkai adapted from his own manga comic book.

Visit the special Pages of Beauty and Madness display in the Sackler shop to pick up these books, and get reading!

Siobhan Donnelly, a summer intern in the department of public affairs and marketing, is currently a student at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

In August a group of students from the ages of nine to eighteen had the opportunity to study the art of claymation at ImaginAsia’s Young Artists Residency. The program combined discovery in the galleries with a chance for students to create their own claymation videos, with help from Erik Swanson, an instructor from the Corcoran School of Art and Design. As ImaginAsia coordinator Stephen Eckerd explained, the residency aims to give students the “technical skills to actualize their vision, because they always have a vision.” The program teaches them “techniques that have been handed down through the centuries” as they learn about the rich historical tradition of making art move.

First, the students explored the Sackler galleries to find works of art that piqued their interest. After some research on their chosen pieces, they then created a storyboard detailing what would happen if their selected works suddenly sprang into action. They imagined their characters had lived for centuries before being confined to the museum. What would happen if these figures were suddenly brought back to life? Finally, students built their own clay figures and sets, and worked with Erik to animate the characters.

Claymation close-up: a detail of one student’s project.

I had a chance to walk around on the final day of the residency and speak to a few students as they completed their projects. Two students were there for their fourth year in a row! Madeleine, 16, and Ray, 12, bounced ideas back and forth to achieve their final product. Ray said his favorite part of the process was “fleshing out the characters, especially when you don’t know what they are going to look like.” They both agreed that they can see a lot of improvement in their work each year.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was Arjit, 11, a newcomer to the claymation residency. He said that the idea of learning to make his own video was what first drew him to the program. He and his friends were unanimous in wanting to come back next year! Each student will be invited to a “grand premiere” at the Sackler, where they will see a compilation of the videos made in their class—and take home a copy for themselves!

3D scan image of the Cosmic Buddha with the Realms of Existence and other Buddhist scenes.

Allison Tyra is an intern in the F|S Public Affairs and Marketing Department.

On Saturday, Asia After Dark welcomes a special guest. He has no hands, and no head, but the Cosmic Buddha has plenty to tell us. This desktop version of a stone sculpture on view in the exhibition Promise of Paradise: Early Chinese Buddhist Sculpture was made using a 3D printer. The incredibly detailed depictions on the deity’s robe tell stories of the Buddhist Realms of Existence, from the heavenly devas to the hells of the less fortunate—fascinating to small children and PhD-wielding scholars alike.

Just as fascinating are the technological advances that allow engineers such as Vince Rossi, 3D Digitization Coordinator at the Smithsonian, to create exact replicas of ancient artifacts out of paper and other materials. Rossi can make small, lightweight versions or large, sturdy copies that could be easier to examine with incredible precision.

“Our focus is on 3D scanning of collection objects and archaeological sites, not just 3D printing replicas,” Rossi says. “With the 3D data itself, we are able to do many things that we cannot do with the real object or 3D printed replica—providing new analysis tools for research, for example. Since 3D scanning is nothing more than millions of measurement points describing an object’s surface, we can offer a researcher many more ways to virtually investigate an object. For example, a conservator can look at two 3D scans of an object taken from one year to the next to see exactly how the object is changing over time.”

Once all of the original item’s data has been uploaded, people around the world can view these details, as well as use a 3D printer to produce their own versions of the object. In other words, a schoolteacher in Oklahoma or a researcher in Shanghai can use the Smithsonian’s information to create interactive tools for learning at all levels.

See how it works and talk with Rossi in person on Saturday, August 17, 7–11 pm, by attending Asia After Dark: Chinese Martial Arts at the Freer. Other highlights of the evening will include the DJs of Hop Fu providing a live score to classic kung fu films, tai chi in the galleries, a DIY crafty teacup sleeve art activity, Tsingtao Chinese beer, kung fu martial performances, and more. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door; Silk Road Society members pay $15 in advance and $20 at the door. The ticket price includes one free drink. Guests must be 21 years old with valid photo ID to attend.

On April 1, 2003, Leslie Cheung ended his life by leaping from the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in central Hong Kong. He was forty-six years old. On the tenth anniversary of his death, fans from around the world made two million origami cranes in his honor—a Guinness World Record. A teen heartthrob Cantopop star before adding film acting to his repertoire, Cheung was a celebrity not only in Hong Kong, but also across East Asia and beyond. In a 2005 poll conducted in honor of the centenary of Chinese cinema, Hong Kongers named him their favorite all-time actor, beating out the likes of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. A 2010 CNN International poll ranked him as the world’s third most iconic musical artist, behind Michael Jackson and the Beatles. His legions of fans run the gamut from millennials to retirees.

Last summer, around the time of our annual Made in Hong Kong Film Festival, I began receiving emails from near and far asking if we were planning a tribute to Cheung for our 2013 festival. In response to this unprecedented outpouring, I decided to include four classic Cheung performances in this year’s lineup, including three 35mm prints from the Hong Kong Film Archive that are otherwise unavailable in any form in the United States.

In keeping with the crowdsourced nature of this tribute, we left the selection of the final film up to our audience. A Facebook poll allowed fans to choose between three of Cheung’s films that were directed by the great Wong Kar-wai: Ashes of Time, Days of Being Wild, and Happy Together.

The winner, Days of Being Wild, couldn’t be a more appropriate choice. It was a pivotal film in both the actor’s and the director’s careers, garnering each his first Hong Kong Film Award. As film critic J. Hoberman put it in the Village Voice, “Days of Being Wild is the movie with which Wong Kar-wai became Wong Kar-wai—the most influential, passionate, and romantic of neo-new-wave directors.” The first of Wong’s many collaborations with master cinematographer Christopher Doyle, the film radiates the dreamlike atmosphere of lush romanticism and longing for lost time that would become his trademark in more famous films, such as In the Mood for Love and 2046. At a time when Hong Kong was known for action movies, broad comedies, and kung fu flicks, this luxuriously paced portrait of wounded hearts and lost souls looked like and felt like nothing else.

In a beautifully nostalgic version of 1960s Hong Kong, Cheung stars as Yuddy (York in English), a charming playboy (Hong Kong film critic Edmund Lee calls him “James Dean reincarnated”) who breaks hearts while seeking to leave his foster mother and solve the mystery surrounding his real one. That Yuddy compares himself to a “bird without legs” of Chinese legend, which can only land when it dies, is especially poignant considering the depression Cheung struggled with throughout his all-too-short life.

Days of Being Wild will be shown in the Freer’s Meyer Auditorium on Friday, August 2, at 7 pm, and Sunday, August 4, at 2 pm. Admission is free, with seats available on a first-come, first-served basis.